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Obama 278278 Responses
Last post: 1 month, 4 weeks ago | Thread started: Apr 24, 08, 5:51 a.m.
- Dr_Rand
"I recognize the risks of talking this way. In an era of globalization and dizzying technological change, cutthroat politics and unremitting culture wars, we don’t even seem to possess a shared language with which to discuss our ideals, much less the tools to arrive at some rough consensus about how, as a nation, we might work together to bring those ideals about. Most of us are wise to the ways of admen, pollsters, speechwriters, and pundits. We know how high-flying words can be deployed in the service of cynical aims, and how the noblest sentiments can be subverted in the name of power, expedience, greed, or intolerance. Even the standard high school history textbook notes the degree to which, from its very inception, the reality of American life has strayed from its myths. In such a climate, any assertion of shared ideals or common values might seem hopelessly naive, if not downright dangerous–an attempt to gloss over serious differences over policy and performance or, worse, a means of muffling the complaints of those who feel ill served by our current institutional arrangements.
My argument, however, is that we have no choice. You don’t need a poll to know that the vast majority of Americans–Republican, Democrat, and independent–are weary of the dead zone that politics has become, in which narrow interests vie for advantage and ideological minorities seek to impose their own versions of absolute truth. Whether we’re from red states or blue states, we feel in our gut the lack of honesty, rigor, and common sense in our policy debates, and dislike what appears to be a continuous menu of false or cramped choices. Religious or secular, black, white, or brown, we sense– correctly–that the nation’s most significant challenges are being ignored, and that if we don’t change course soon, we may be the first generation in a very long time that leaves behind a weaker and more fractured America than the one we inherited. Perhaps more than any other time in our recent history, we need a new kind of politics, one that can excavate and build upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans."
- Apr 24, 08, 5:51 a.m. – Permalink
- 23kon
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- Dog-earApr 24, 08, 5:52 a.m. – Permalink
- Spookytim
That's quite a thing Obama said there. What scares me about it, despite agreeing wholeheartedly with it, is that it is a series of statements that are entirely outside the realm of contemporary politics. Its almost like a counter culture statement when considered in the modern political climate. He presents an almost anarchistic viewpoint that undermines the established political monster.
I admire him for that but I think he will be completely destroyed by the beast he hopes to slay.
- Dog-earApr 24, 08, 5:58 a.m. – Permalink
- Dr_Rand
"NY Times Thursday blows a Trailer Park Sized hole in the Clintons' electability fantasy.
Exit polling and independent political analysts offer evidence that Mr. Obama could do just as well as Mrs. Clinton among blocs of voters with whom he now runs behind. Obama advisers say he also appears well-positioned to win swing states and believe he would have a strong shot at winning traditional Republican states like Virginia.
According to surveys of Pennsylvania voters leaving the polls on Tuesday, Mr. Obama would draw majorities of support from lower-income voters and less-educated ones — just as Mrs. Clinton would against Mr. McCain, even though those voters have favored her over Mr. Obama in the primaries.
And national polls suggest Mr. Obama would also do slightly better among groups that have gravitated to Republican in the past, like men, the more affluent and independents, while she would do slightly better among women."
- Dog-earApr 24, 08, 5:59 a.m. – Permalink
- TheBlueOne
I said this before and I'll say it again here: What Obama holds out, for me, is indeed Hope. And I don't mean that as some sort of abstract concept, like "Golly gee willikers I hope things will be better tomorrow than they were today. I hope someone takes care of this stuff..."
No I mean in the sense that I again have hope that what I say and do, and what every fellow citizen around me says and does matter. He is a populist in this sense. Since the Reagan years I have seen a steady divorce of citizens from their government here in the US. Kennedy's admonition to ..ask what you can do for your country" is merely a Hallmark card these days, given lip-service, but little else. There is so much cynicism and distraction, and it's a cynicism not born of the populace but beaten into it.
It seriously is the attitude not of freemen in a free society but one of a cowed citizenry under a growing oligarchy, one which fosters an attitude of "Well, what can you do about it, you can't fight the powers that be."
I have never felt so low as under the fear-mongering of the current Bush administration. From the daily inconveniences of Security Theater - it drips and drops into our life until it actually seems normal - to the shadowy existential feeling that the country can go to war without anyone clamoring for it, that it can wreck lives, in human scale through vast economic policy that no citizen of free people would accept. It reeks to me of something Soviet, something sinister. And while it has reared it's head so arrogantly under Bush II, it was certainly going on under Clinton - the Rise of NAFTA and the illusion of a "global free market" - where exactly DID those midwest jobs go and cui bono? There was no citizen referendum on this, even as Reagan, Bush I and the Clinton years saw the rise of Corporate power at the expense of the Unions. Who exactly was that Gulf War fought for, anyway?
Now Obama in office might prove to be another corporate shill, or maybe a hamstrung reformer dealing with a monster beyond his abilities, but I think his campaign and his message has and will continue to let loose forces that have been far too long bottled up in the United States. A McCain or Clinton presidency would only hasten along this slow tumble into a society that surrenders it's freedoms, it's hopes and it's vitality for the delusion of some "shining city on a hill" that was never anything more than oligarchic rhetoric. Who gets to live in that Shining City? You? Me? I don't think so. A presidency by either of those two would merely continue to put a free citizenry further into sleep, although probably by different means. This whole idea that Government is something outside the influence of the Common man. Obama was right - this is something that creates bitterness, it makes people cling to small things like strange, life-negating interpretations of religion, cults of petty violence and hatred of the Other just so they can maintain some sense of "control" over reality, because the real levers of power are moved farther and farther away from their grasp.
What good is a government for and by the people if the people are absent?
Freedom and Democracy are not default things in human society. They are fought for and never guaranteed. America has been lulled into this false delusion that it can have the fruits of Democracy without the work. They are even tricked with the rhetoric that we somehow can impose "freedom and democracy" on another country through force, because they falsely believe in what this patently false idea of what "freedom" and "democracy" means.
Nothing new under the sun here. This is the same struggle that the Enlightenment fought against, that the US Constitution was written for. But the Enemies of such things have lulled so many of us to sleep, made us feel hopeless.
Obama has made me really feel that I could actually do something about what defines what it means to be an American, an actual living breathing American, in the world today rather than settling for buying a flag pin and sticking a yellow ribbon on my car and praying to God that all our boys come home safe and calling that doing my duty as an American.
Hope baby, that's what he gives us. And it can be a fearsome uncontrollable beast. It scares many, many people who are trying to make sure you have no say in your destiny.
Hope.
- Dog-earApr 24, 08, 6:47 a.m. – Permalink
- joyride
clintons actions at the moment tell me all I need about her (and what I expected anyways). Like most of the views about obama, I think he represents the possibility that US politics can change direction from where it is heading, in the eyes of it's people and those of the rest of the world.
- Dog-earApr 24, 08, 7:03 a.m. – Permalink
- TheBlueOne
The only plus McCain holds over Clinton for me is that McCain IS just crazy enough to go off message. Clinton WILL be a corporate shill from day one. McCain will do what he is told, but he might just be crazy enough to do something right - kinda the way Reagan agreed to sit down with Gorbachev. Many of Reagan's supporting cast (many who are behind our Iraq War/War on Terror show) thought Reagan went off the reservation on that and were pissed. McCain might have it in him to do that too..but I'm not betting the future of America that the guy is just crazy enough to accidentally do something fortutious while pursing an agenda of ill.
- Dog-earApr 24, 08, 7:11 a.m. – Permalink
